


This Video Isn’t For The Faint-Hearted

by Kana_Go



Series: Russian to English translations [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Drama, M/M, Minor Violence, Rumlow is not a good guy but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 06:33:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6273556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kana_Go/pseuds/Kana_Go
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Shock!” YouTube blares. “Inhuman treatment of POW! This video isn’t for the faint-hearted!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Video Isn’t For The Faint-Hearted

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to wonderful Lauralot for beta-reading!

Rumlow hasn’t had too much entertainment left to him. His burns are healing fast, faster than supposed; strong analgesics keep pain on a short leash and fog his brain; freedom of movement is available to such a degree that he can envy a two-month old baby. But he’s able to move his wrist and fingers. To blink. To see. And those idiots from SHIELD dumped HYDRA’s records to the Internet, videos included.

“Shock!” YouTube blares. “Inhuman treatment of POW! This video isn’t for the faint-hearted!”

Rumlow has not too many movements left but he has the luxury in the form of a gimmicky bed, pain dulled with drugs and a three monitor setup. He chooses three video clips and starts them all at the same time, each on a different screen. The videos are recorded on security cameras which provide not really grand view and don’t capture any sound but those events are developing in front of him as if in reality. The fact is that he was there along with the Soldier and, unlike the Soldier, he remembers everything just fine.

Rumlow hasn’t had too much entertainment left to him. He sinks back against the pillows. And sets upon watching.

*

 

The left screen.

Gym mats were springy under his feet. Rumlow twirled a stun baton and snapped fingers of his free hand to draw attention. The Soldier was staring. His glance was wandering over punching bags and pedestal bags, over the guards at the door and along the walls. He was looking at anything but Rumlow.

“Rat-a-tat.” Rumlow knocked on his own headguard. “Is anybody at home?”  
~

  
The middle screen.

Thick green goo was flowing down his nose, chin and cheeks, sticking the hair on the sides of his head into thin lumpy strings. The Soldier looked like the ghoulish girl from that H-film who puked pea soup forty ways for Sunday. Although, he wasn’t making U-turns with his head but was sitting completely still. Only the fingers of his hands on either side of the bowl were trembling barely perceptibly.  
~

 

The right screen.

The water had splattered for allotted fifteen minutes and then three minutes extra before they stumbled into the shower area.

“Pierce is waiting,” Rollins said impatiently. “Has he finished there yet?”

The Soldier was sitting in the corner with his knees drawn to his chest and staring into vacant space through water streams hitting against the tiles.

“He hasn’t started yet.”

“Dammit.”

“Jack, a beer’s on me.” Rumlow was unfastening his belt with his one hand and tearing at his T-shirt caught on his ear with the other. “Fuck, three beers are on me. You just distract the old man for another fifteen mikes. ”

* 

 

He has a soft belly and muscles of iron. His lips are bright with water. The pink tip of his tongue can be seen between them.

“You, moggie,” Rumlow says not really fondly so that the Soldier doesn’t put on frills. He says, “Don’t even think of smooching.” Then adds, “Shut your mouth, bugger.”

It sounds almost affectionately.  
*

  
“Get up.”

The Soldier scrambled on his feet but was still staring into vacancy through a water veil and Rumlow.

“Are you going to shower in the first place?”

Rumlow took a sponge, soaked it and threw it, darkened and heavy with water, at the Soldier. The sponge hit him in the chest and fell on the floor with a thick splash. The Soldier with his head cocked to his shoulder seemed to search for meaning in his life in a blurry pattern on the wall.

“Got it.” Rumlow tried the water with his elbow and squatted to pick up the sponge.

Warm streams were banging on the back of his head and pouring into his ears.  
*

 

Across the left screen two figures are flashing. Now they’re circling lazily as if drowsily, then they’re shifting rapidly, trading blows. Rumlow is withier, leaner. The Soldier is built like a fucking tank. He isn’t bustling or making dabs but pressing with his weight and _inevitability_ – as though he’s going to exhaust his sparring partner unhurriedly, force him from the mats and hammer into the wall. As though the Soldier’s going to drive his fist through him, easily, by putting metal strength and all of his heavy weight into that blow.

 _People’re really well fed in HYDRA afaics,_ is some idiot’s comment under the video clip. _May I enlist?_      
Rumlow’s muscles are like wire ropes, they’re protruding starkly, as if trying to break through his skin. Soldier’s sturdy sleek muscles are rolling under a moderate layer of fat.

Some dipsticks keep to harp on about Bucky Barnes’s alleged chronic starvation in HYDRA. Nonsense. You mustn’t punish by deprivation of basic needs, ask the first psych you meet. Besides, a hungry soldier is a bad soldier. With the capital S, the rule doesn’t change.  
*

 

His eyes under the tangled strands were clear and empty like a well-made doll’s. Baggy boxing shorts were hanging loose on his hips. Was it intentionally? Just try and fight when your rival wears full safety gear but all your combat garments are just boxers constantly trying to hobble you.

“You have the arm, I have this.” Rumlow turned on his stun baton for a second. “All’s fair.”

The Soldier startled at a loud dry crackle and squared off shuffling his bare feet against the mats. His eyes became focused, his nostrils flared.

“Cool it, just a sparring,” Rumlow pointed out hastily. “Bite my head off and I’ll fucking end you.”   
*

  
He pushed the Soldier to the wall and quickly soaped him – his nape, his back, his legs.

Rinse. Turn. Repeat.

No sooner had the sponge made its way to the Soldier’s lower stomach than metal fingers closed on Rumlow’s throat.

He almost crushed the tiles to hell with his own head and felt his feet losing touch with the floor. The Soldier didn’t actually picked him up by his neck but Rumlow still understood the feelings of an unlucky self-murderer who’d taken his rope a few centimeters too long.

“Woke up finally?” He forced a wry smirk. “Maybe I should have grabbed your nuts from the very start?”

The Soldier looked at him with those frozen pale eyes and bared his teeth. His fingers squeezed a bit tighter.

“OK,” Rumlow wheezed out. “Let me go.”

The Soldier quitted hold of him. Rumlow rubbed his throat and shoved the sponge, which by some miracle didn’t fall out of his hand, to the Soldier.

“Finish washing your family jewels on your own, fuckhead.”

He stepped out of the shower stall and turned away pointedly.

*

 

After all that frosting and defrosting and long-term cryosleep the Soldier’s digestive system is a mess and his appetite is decreased to literally nothing. Yeah, you can find it really funny but the great and fearless HYDRA’s weapon eats like an ulcerous grandma, only his portions are five times as large. Protein shakes, smoothies, all kinds of slops, lean meat, dry toasts… Bare minimum of salt, no condiments.

To fill the asshole with food was more difficult than to feed a heard of spoiled kids and pedigree cats. But he had to be fed. By all means. As scheduled, plague on him. Well, basically it was beyond Rumlow’s duties but sometimes the doctors, under the pretence of reinforcement of emotional dependency or some other bullshit, shoved the Soldier on him and buzzed off God knows where. Most likely, they just didn’t want to do their work once again.    
*

  
Eventually the Soldier caught him and knocked him down. They were rolling on the mats, sliding on their mixed sweat. Rumlow had no chances but he was still trying to reach the Soldier at least with his baton. If it wasn’t for a strict ban on serious damage the asshole would break his arm. In five different places. The Soldier hated electricity.

*

 

When the man’s palms fell on Rumlow’s hips he nearly jumped out of his skin and almost dislodged the shelf with toiletries.

“Have I ever approached to you from the back without warning, imbecile? I could…”

Well, he could… what? The Soldier was stronger anyway.

“What do you want?” He eased up.

The other’s hands weren’t moving, only his thumbs were sliding in circles on the wet skin. The Soldier was silent. He knew how to speak of course but usually didn’t find it necessary. That bastard got used that everyone did everything for him at all accounts.

“Whoa!” Rumlow squeezed his wrists slightly. “Is it an ego-trip? What if I’ll say yes?”

The Soldier gave his thigh such a pinch that a resulting multicolored bruise didn’t vanish for a month.  
~  
It was edited out from the footage, naturally. On tape Rumlow stepped out of the shower stall and then right away there were towels on the floor, and huge eyes, and amazed as all get-out fixed gaze into the ceiling, and metal fingers were leaving long zigzag scratches on the tiles. 

*

  
Those morons from SHIELD knew what to display publicly.

Back then the Soldier was struggling with a deep bowl of some bronchitis snot coloured broth and didn’t even try to pick up a spoon. Rumlow had an urgent debriefing half an hour later. The camera didn’t capture any sound. Thank goodness. Otherwise everyone would burst their sides with laughing if they heard what gibberish he was throwing.

“Come on, kid. A spoon for Schmidt, a spoon for Zola, a spoon for Pierce, come on, eat up, stuff your face already, you, nassssty bitch…”

What was the most frustrating, it would be a different matter if there was some really inedible shit in the bowl. Rumlow voluntarily tasted it – perfectly normal soup, yes, lukewarm, yes, undersalted, so what? They were occasionally forced to choke on worse rations in the field but that freak still dared to turn up his nose.

The Soldier was contemplating the contents of the bowl as if reading in tea-leaves. His hands were perfectly still on either side of it.

*

 

Rumlow pinned the Soldier down and slipped his hand into the loose pant leg. Maybe he should try and yank those stupid boxers off? Perhaps, it would distract the man for a couple of seconds. The Soldier growled and lodged such a blow on the side of his head that he heard ringing in his ears. Even the headguard didn’t help.    
*

 

Rumlow stroked him on the thigh, from the hipbone downwards, pushed his leg up with a hand behind his knee. The room blurred before Rumlow’s eyes – the Soldier rolled them over and crashed on him bodily. The impact knocked wind out of him. Tile seams scraped his shoulder blades painfully.  
“Hey, that wasn’t the deal!” Rumlow protested. “Put everything back, now!”

He had roughly as many chances to scramble out from under the Soldier on his own as to crawl out from under a small elephant. Rumlow had enough brain matter not to creep under elephants. So where did his brains flow away now?

The Soldier exhaled sharply through his nose, rolled on his back and dragged Rumlow on top of him.

“You…don’t…” Rumlow gasped out. “…get handsy… Jerk.”

The Soldier laughed like dogs do it – silently, with his nose crinkled, with smiling eyes, and lips, and teeth, and tongue. As though he had been paid the best compliment ever.

*

  
Oh yeah, those morons from SHIELD knew what video clips they should feed to folks greedy of sympathy. How Rumlow saw scarlet. How he grasped the hair on the back of the Soldier’s head and a couple times dunked that impassive mug into the bowl, deeper, so that the damned soup trickled out of his ears. How thick green goo was flowing down his nose, chin and cheeks, sticking the hair on the sides of his head into thin lumpy strings. How the Soldier, when Rumlow let him go and staggered back, stayed completely still, only the fingers of his hands on either side of the bowl were trembling barely perceptibly.

 _Shock_ _!_  
The further footage was cropped.

*

  
The pictures on the outer screens are practically identical, only the right one’s showing much more water and much less clothing.

On the left one Rumlow finally got the Soldier with his stun baton and was vindictively holding the button pushed in for several seconds.

The pictures on the outer screens are practically identical – eyes rolled back in the head, a wet mouth, lower ribs arched almost unnaturally, a spine caved-in with a soft pop. Just like in some freaking Find Five Differences game.

The Soldier nearly bent over backward, bumping the back of his head and his heels against slippery tiles, then went lip. He was shivering violently all over.

“Easy, easy,” Rumlow repeated soothingly again and again. “Just calm down. Shhhh.”

Luckily, the camera didn’t capture any sound.

*

 

“Fuck it,” Rumlow muttered in a dismal voice. “Fuck.”

He brought a towel, wiped the Soldier’s face and that stupid long hair dry. Mopped the table clean. Obtained another helping. By means of promises, persuading and dumb luck he wheedled the Soldier into eating a half portion. Needless to say, Rumlow was extremely late for the debriefing and on the next day got his ass kicked by Pierce – for being late, and for the failure to keep his temper in line, and for mishandling of the organization’s valuable asset.

 _Inhuman treatment of POW!  
_ *

  
The Soldier was gawking at the off-white ceiling as though it was the starry sky. Rumlow was sitting cross-legged on bunched soiled towels. He wanted to have a smoke. Or to hang himself.

“Pierce’s gonna kill me,” he said.

“He won’t,” the Soldier answered hoarsely. “I’ll speak to him.”

Well, well, look, who’s talking now.

“You’re a spoiled asshole.” Rumlow commented admiringly.

The Soldier grabbed his wrist and glanced on the water-resistant watch.

“We have three more minutes,” he said. “Come lie down with me.”

“We have three more minutes to take a shower and tidy up the mess.” Rumlow reminded. “You can perfectly lie down in your cryo-chamber.”

He thought the Soldier would flinch like he was punched, but the man only snorted as if Rumlow had said something really funny.

* 

  
Those events are developing in front of Rumlow as if in reality. The fact is that he was there along with the Soldier and, unlike the Soldier, he remembers everything just fine. Meltdowns. Forced feeding. Screams. Clips. Stun batons. Labs. Cameras documented all that dispassionately and in its true colours. No wonder that folks in comments are conking out and throwing shit storms.

_This video isn’t for the faint-hearted!_

There were other videos which weren’t dumped into the web for public access, obviously.

On one of those tapes Rumlow was making for the Soldier lop-sided balls of mashed potatoes and perching halves of hard-boiled eggs on them, caplike. The Soldier was looking at him like he considered Rumlow a nutjob but all the same he was chewing and smiling.

 

  
END


End file.
